Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Isla
With his gaze still locked on mine, Knox gets off the bike, the vintage design nothing like the one he has back home. It gives him a darker edge, matching the storm gathering in his eyes.
Finally, his gaze snaps to Chad, and his steps quicken.
Chad straightens with a stony stare, gearing up to argue with Knox. “Knox Vale, you—”
He doesn’t get to finish.
Knox lunges forward and silences him with a fist to the face that sends him flying backward in his chair.
I gasp, jumping to my feet.
“You fucking son of a bitch,” Knox growls, stalking toward Chad as he scrambles to get off the ground. “I told you to stay away from my girl.”
My mouth drops open. He looks… unhinged. Like he’s left the real world entirely.
Before Chad can get up, Knox grabs him by the throat with both hands and hoists him off the ground.
Straightaway, I see the resurrected linebacker college football fans used to call the Monster.
Chad has nothing on Knox.
Knox is all muscle and rage, while Chad is skater-boy-thin and hopelessly outmatched.
He was probably relying on Knox being the respectable businessman, not this beast ripping through the street ready to tear him apart.
“Let go of me, you crazy motherfucker!” Chad shouts.
“Damn fucking right I’m crazy.” Knox shakes him and headbutts him so hard that Chad’s head snaps back, and he looks like he’s about to black out. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
“Knox, stop!” I rush toward them, tugging at Knox’s shirt, but he doesn’t even register me.
He isn’t here to argue.
He’s here to fight.
“You little shit,” Knox snarls. “What kind of man follows a woman on her honeymoon? Not to mention the fucking ‘we will find each other again’ gift.” He drives his knee into Chad’s stomach this time.
Chad manages a few weak punches, but they’re nothing. Knox doesn’t even flinch.
I had the attention of curious onlookers before, now people are pulling out their phones to record this chaos.
“If I catch you sniffing around my wife again, I’ll cut off your dick and kill you.”
The savage growl ripping from his chest barely sounds human.
“You don’t deserve her!” Chad wheezes, writhing in Knox’s grip.
“Neither do you. But at least I’ll fight for her. At least I’d stay.” Knox shakes him again. “How the fuck do you run off to Australia and abandon a girl like that?”
Wow…
There he goes again. The villain saying every single word I wanted to scream at Chad when he left me.
No… I wouldn’t have had the strength back then. I needed someone to stand up for me.
The way Knox is doing now.
The irony hits hard.
My husband. My temporary husband. Defending me against the ex who broke me.
I didn’t even realize Knox knew how Chad and I ended. Not mentioning it, even in our worst argument, was another quiet mercy he gave me.
Still, I’m mad at him.
And I hate that these words are coming from him. Because he shouldn’t care.
I shouldn’t want him to care.
But I do.
God help me, I do.
“Let… me… go,” Chad splutters, voice garbled.
The sound slices through my thoughts, dragging me back to the horrifying present.
Chad’s face is changing. His skin is going slack. His lips turning gray.
Shit. He’s losing air.
Chad’s lips turn gray and panic rushes through me.
“Knox, let him go.” My voice cracks, but he doesn’t even flinch. His grip only tightens, knuckles white, jaw locked in a way that tells me he’s too far gone to hear reason.
“Knox, stop!” I shove at his arm, his shoulder, anything I can reach, but he’s a wall of muscle and fury. “You’re hurting him!”
Nothing.
He’s lost in it. Rage, jealousy, fear, and whatever darkness has him by the throat are stronger than my words.
My pulse is a frantic thrum in my ears, and my chest seizes with dread. Something inside me snaps, and all I want to do is flee.
“I’m not doing this!” I shout, stepping back so fast I bump into the table. “I’m done. I’m leaving.”
My words punctuate the air. Sharp. Final.
And Knox hears them. I see them register.
His head jerks in my direction, his eyes snapping to mine with something feral and terrified flickering beneath all that rage. For a split second, his anger breaks, then his grip loosens around Chad’s neck.
Chad drops like dead weight, hitting the cobblestones hard before rolling onto his side.
He wheezes violently, coughing in fits as he clutches his throat, then gulping down air like he’s drowning on dry land.
Knox doesn’t look at him. Not once.
His gaze is locked on me, dark and frantic as if my words cut deeper than any punch he threw.
“Isla…” Chad coughs, his voice rough and wrecked, his face bloodied and bruised. He moves toward me on his knees, but I hold up a hand to stop him.
“Don’t, Chad.” I shake my head at him. “You stay. Or better yet, go back to New York. Knox is right.”
“Isla. But—”
“No.”
Knox steps forward, closer to me, but I stop him, too, with a shake of my head.
“Love, let’s go.” His gaze locks with mine, the rage fading and something softer entering his eyes.
In that split second, my previous worries about us, about him, return and the mess with Chad fades. This isn’t about Chad anymore.
Truthfully, everything about Chad was a separate matter that just highlighted the problems Knox and I have between us.
The confusion, the conflict, the clashing. It’s all too damn much. It feels like trying to walk backwards down a cliff with the edges crumbling into the sea.
I turn away. Because if I don’t, I’ll break. So, I turn and walk as fast as I can.
If I stay another second, I’ll fall apart right in front of both of them.
“Isla,” Knox calls after me, and just like I thought he would, he follows me.
His determined footsteps hit the cobblestones behind me, heavy and unrelenting.
Just like his presence.
“Isla, stop.” His voice wraps around me, still vibrating with the remnants of the fight.
I keep going, walking faster.
If I turn around now, all the things I shouldn’t feel for a man who will never be mine will spill out.
The crowd murmurs behind us, phones still recording the aftermath, but Knox doesn’t care. It’s strange because he’s so protective of his life from the press.
The only thing he seems dead set on is closing the distance between us.
His steps quicken, and so do mine.
I weave between the tables and out onto the narrow street, desperate for distance.
The street opens into a twisting alleyway that looks like something out of a maze. Old stone walls rise high on either side. Vines trail across archways, shadows spill into the cracks, and the path splinters into too many directions.
I try to follow the curves and turns as if this isn’t the first time I’ve been here and I take this route hundreds of times.
To my dismay, every corner looks the same. Left, right, dead end.
I look for an exit, any exit, but there isn’t one, just more winding passages and the echo of Knox’s footsteps behind me. And we’re completely alone now.
“Isla,” Knox calls me again with more insistence. “Stop running from me.”
“Leave me alone.”
“You know I can haul you over my shoulder in one breath and drag your ass wherever I want, right?” There’s a smile in his voice. I don’t look back to see if he’s giving me that cocky trademark grin of his.
“Typical monster,” I toss back. “Why don’t you go back to work. Or to her?”
“Who’s her?”
“You know exactly who I mean.”
I whirl around another corner, searching for a way out, but the alley narrows into a tighter, shadowed passage.
Shit. I’m trapped.
I pivot to double back, but it’s too late. Knox is already there, right beside me.
He doesn’t give me a chance to say anything else.
He spins me and guides me backward until my spine hits the cool stone wall. Before I can even form a protest, his hand wraps around my wrist and his body presses against mine, caging me in.
I press my palms against his chest, trying to push him away, but all I feel is the hard, solid muscles beneath my hands. His intensity radiates around me like a heat wave.
“Knox—”
“No, love.” His jaw tightens, and he flexes his fingers at my waist. “You seem to be mistaken.”
“I’m not. You beat the shit out of Chad. You are a damn monster.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I am a monster. Your fucking monster,” he murmurs, voice dark and raw, his breath hot on my cheek. “So, I’ll only ever chase you when you run from me. And guess what, love? I’ll always find you.”
Those words sink in, and the world tilts.
His gaze searches my face. “This would be so much easier if you’d stop running. Stop resisting.” He’s talking about everything. Not only now.
“And if I let you catch me, what happens to me then, Knox Vale?”
He leans in, brushing his forehead against mine. “We fall together.”
“No...” My voice cracks. “I can’t.”
“Yes, wife.”
That word. It does something to me. Something I can’t shake, because I want all the things that come with it. Like the belonging. Damn me, I want to belong to him.
But Knox Vale is like an addict’s favorite drug. A bittersweet mistake you know you’ll make again and again and again. “I can’t figure you out.”
“You don’t need to figure me out right now. All you need to know is that there is no her. Only you.”
An aching breath catches in my throat, and my chest constricts, painfully tight, like my ribs are trying to keep my heart from spilling straight into his hands.
“Knox—" He cuts me off again, this time with a searing kiss that dances in my blood and ignites my soul.
His warm mouth sucks all logic out of me, wrecking my brain. I mold into him, savoring the way his tongue darts around my mouth.
Knox cups the back of my neck to taste me deeper, his kiss a reminder of whom I belong to.
He pulls away and keeps his grip on my neck. “Delicious as always, wife.” He presses me a fraction harder into the wall. “I held back with you before. Now it’s time to show you what it truly feels like to fuck a monster.”
A shiver rolls through me, sharp and involuntary, like my body reacts before my mind can catch up. Heat pools low in my belly, churning with want in a way that terrifies me.
Using his knee, he pushes my legs wide and lifts the hem of my skirt. He cups my pussy through my panties and strokes down my slit. Then, he slides two fingers beneath the lace and pushes into me.
A hungry smile brightens his face when he feels how wet I am. “Always wet for me.”
“I’m…” I stutter.
“Mine.” He pumps in and out of me hard.
“Yes,” I whimper, grabbing the lapels of his jacket.
“Say it, Isla.”
“I’m yours.”
Cupping my ass, he lifts me. Instinctively, I wrap my legs around him, no longer caring where we are. Or who may see us.
“Good girl,” his whispers, brushing his nose along mine. “I’m going to bury myself deep inside your beautiful cunt, love.”
His dirty talk makes my head spin.
He rips open the front of his pants, shoves my panties to one side, and impales me with his cock in one savage thrust.
“Oh, God… Knox,” I cry out in response. His hard length hurts, but my body drags him deeper inside, like it’s been starving for him to return.
“Just let me fuck you.” His hand skims over my skin with the dominance of a man who always gets what he wants.
Jolts of pleasure shoot straight to my pussy. I’m so aroused that I’m about to combust.
He powers deeper inside me, then he starts to fuck me.
Waves of electricity paralyze my body. His rough, hard thrusts are so out of control that the sloppy slapping of flesh against flesh echoes through the alleyway.
My God. I should be ashamed. Anyone could turn that corner and see us. But I don’t care. Not even a little.
Knox pounds into me like a man starved of air, and I love it.
It doesn’t take long for a wild orgasm to ravage my body like a tsunami, and I scream, helpless in its hold. Helpless to him.
“Scream for me, baby,” he demands, hammering harder into me.
I obey, though I never had a choice. The scream was already on the tip of my tongue. My shriek rips apart the air around us.
Knox fucks me harder, his merciless pace intensifying with every passing second. I lock my legs tighter around him, glad he’s holding me because I know my legs would betray me if I were standing.
I close my eyes, my body straining from the ferocious combination of his thrusts and the pleasure he’s giving me.
“No, love. Look at me.” He catches my jaw, his fingers splayed over my neck. “Look at me when I fuck you.”
I do. I look at him. And it damn near destroys me.
Because in his eyes, I see something I never expected to find. Something far more dangerous than New York’s most-sought-after billionaire.
I see something that could break me in ways Chad never did.
It’s fueled with that fire that keeps burning between us.
“Knox…”
“Baby.”
He tenses, and his cock jerks inside me, then he grunts deep and comes.
I come, too, and we share the reckless release.
Feeling weak, I slacken against him, barely managing to grip his shoulders.
“Come home with me,” he mutters in my ear, the scruff of his beard brushing against my jaw.
“Do I have a choice?” I tease.
“Absolutely not.”
“Then I guess the answer is yes.”
He inches back to look at me and grins. “You’re learning, love. Learning to be mine.”
“I guess I am.”